Charles Robb

Crop

02 September–08 October 200502 Sep–08 Oct 2005

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For Crop, the latest installment in his sculptural self-portrait project, Brisbane’s Charles Robb strands three life-size self-portraits—aping ‘cropped’ portrait busts or fragments of classical sculpture—across the floor of our biggest gallery. This beautifully judged work mixes vast space and intense detail, visceral realism and the frigid materiality of marble. Using academic realism to paradoxically expressive effect, Crop combines the ideas of a deposed classical artistic tradition (the busts look like they have been knocked off their pedestals) and the-death-of-the-author (one mouth is stuffed, as if by a mortician or chef), yet exceeds both.

Principle Funders

The IMA is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Australia Council for the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory Governments. The IMA is a member of Contemporary Art Organisations Australia.